Week One: so far, heart tz.

So, we are here.

After a few weeks of reprising dorm life at Standford and some all-out team bonding, the inagural class of Global Health Corps Fellows has officially headed out for their placements. Fellowship teams will be in the US, Malawi, Rwanda and of course...Tanzania.

Team TZ consists of three fellowship teams, including myself and my partner Clement, as well as two other fellowship teams. My fellow American fellows (see if you can keep up with the double meaning of fellow!) Andrew and Ameet, and their respective partners Goodluck and Jafari. That's a lot of names, but basically all you need to remember is that the American fellows = the A-Team (Andrew, Ameet, Angie) and the whole of Team TZ is the jam.

We all arrived in Dar es Salaam last week, and on Tuesday Clement and I made our way to Morogoro, Tanzania, where we'll be living for the next year. We'll be working with the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS), which is based at Sokoine University in Morogoro.

The details of our work are still coming together, but basically SACIDS is a regional disease surveillance network that is trying to manage and mitigate the impact of infectious diseases in southern Africa. The first few days have mostly been devoted to getting settled and trying to get things set up, but I'm sure there will be more info to come on what we'll be up to. Stay tuned...